my cheeks still hurt from so much laughter

The 2011 Project Life Kick Off certainly did not disappoint! Lots of creativity, lots of inspiration, lots of laughs, LOTS of excitement about Project Life, lots of "ahha!" moments, and lots of productivity. We had a fantastic time celebrating the beginning of Project Life for this year. I can't wait to get together again next month! Here is everyone with our Project Life albums.

There is a nice mixture of different Project Life editions. Some from the 2010 edition, the 2011 Turquoise edition, and the 2011 Amber edition. (A couple of ladies in the photo are waiting to order their kits when Amazon has more in stock, so they were celebrating with us at the Kick Off, but didn't have their albums quite yet...) Some of us have scrapbooked for years and others have never scrapbooked. I am the only one out of this group who has done a Project Life album before, so this is a new scrapbooking concept for most everyone in our Project Life group. Some of us had been working on our 2011 Project Life albums since January 1 and some of us were scared to even open up the Project Life box! It was awesome to get everyone's albums set up and ready to go, start adding their photos, and to see each person "get" how to complete their albums this year. I so believe in this scrapbook concept. Especially for those who think they are creatively challenged, don't have time to scrapbook, or are just intimidated by the word 'scrapbooking'. I'm SO GLAD this group of women has committed to document the everyday stories and lives of their families for 2011. I think they will whole-heartedly treasure this album once it is completed. And, hopefully, have a little fun in the process!

Here are some views of my first two weeks of layouts from my PL album this year.

Week 1, right side of the layout. Photos along the top and bottom, journaling cards in the middle. This is how every layout will look like throughout the year.

Week 2. I took a bunch of photos that I wanted to include in my album this week. So, in addition to the photo per day in the page protectors that came with the PL kit, I added a 12 x 12 divided page protector right in the middle of this week's layout. This page protector is divided up into 4 x 4 inch squares. Its one of my favorite page protector styles! I included a few extra photos from our everyday lives from this week and also a few other things. A business card from the doctor's office, a note that Matt wrote to Jack and put in his lunch one day that week, part of a birthday card I made for Matt, and some extra fun patterned paper with a little extra journaling. I won't add extra pages EVERY week, but loved filling in this week's layout with some extra goodies.

Sometimes my journaling is just a simple story from something that happened that day, like this:

And sometimes my journaling is a list of things, like this:

Other days my journaling is just a quote from something the kids said that day, a to-do list, or just documenting what we did that particular day. I'll also be sure to add receipts, tags from clothes, artwork by the kids, etc, throughout the year.

This project can be tailored to whatever works for you! And its oh-so-fun!